The Paper Eater

by Liz Jensen

  – I almost fancy her, he leers. Go on, give her another twirl!

  After that, he wants to know who’s next. Who I’ll be making.

  – There isn’t a next, I tell him.

  – Why?

  – Cos she’s the last.

  I was going to teach him to play, once I had the set ready. But he’ll be dead.

  – Fancy lunch, I ask, changing the subject pronto.

  Big mistake: when we get to the canteen, the midday news from Atlantica is on, and Craig Devon, my childhood tormentor, is staring out at me from the screen. I’ve never quite got used to seeing his face again – which is why when I lived in Gravelle Road, I’d get my news from the net. Just the sight of him now – all chunked out, that porky pampered look – makes me want to do damage.

  Having proven there is no constitutional reason why the Liberty software shouldn’t be considered as a candidate, goes Craig, pretending to be a grown-up, the indications are that the people are increasingly behind the idea of a non-political federal service provider managing their nation.

  An animated graphic with lots of arrows shows how easy it is to do: a little man-shape in Washington bursts like a bubble, to be replaced by a CD, representing Libertycare, with the bird logo fluttering around it. The CD pulses gently, sending golden waves across the whole map of the United States.

  Craig Devon’s smiling now, as though it’s his idea.

  So, with legal hitches a thing of the past, the next question is how the ordinary citizens of America are reacting to the prospect of a president-free superpower, he goes.

  – Well, I’m impressed with the way Atlantica’s handled its Marginals, says a fat lady. Ship ’em out.

  A big groan from us lot.

  Next they show a clip from a political ad for Libertycare: it’s Mount Rushmore, peopled by giant Muppet caricatures of past presidents, yammering inanities and shooting missiles around the globe. You can’t see their dicks but it’s clever; you can tell they’re using the missiles to see who can pee the highest and furthest.

  – Don’t worry! yells one of them, breaking off to waggle his muppety face at the camera. We’re in charge!

  I groan. I had no idea it’d come to this. Serves me right for opting out, I guess. Till now, I’ve operated a one-man news blackout on myself.

  The current surge in support for Libertycare is thanks to the efforts of one man, says Craig Devon. Who, over the past year, has been campaigning tirelessly to achieve just the victory that the polls are now predicting in next Wednesday’s election.

  – Next Wednesday? I shout. Isn’t that just before Liberty Day?

  – Shh! goes the bloke next to me.

  Up on the screen appears a fat man, going ape. As he whoops and jumps about, the slogan dances on his T-shirt: Let’s go for it. I remember him from TV before, during the Festival of Choice, more than a year ago. This is the famous Michigan taxi driver who led campaign marches, and bombarded the Internet. Earl.

  – And believe you me, we’re gonna win! He beams cheesily beneath his baseball cap. – We’re gonna tell them just where they can shove it! A huge cheer rises up behind him. – This is the future I want, proclaims Earl, pointing to the fried-egg map of Atlantica. Sunny side up!

  – Jesus, says John under his breath.

  An echoing murmur runs round the canteen, then hushes. Blokes are exchanging pale glances. Someone groans. Inside my head, I take a careful step back. You could get worked up about all this, I’m thinking. But if you’re powerless – well, feeling stuff about your fellow humans is a mug’s game, isn’t it? If I’ve spent the past year with my head forcibly stuck in the sand, it’s for a reason.

  So when Craig Devon pops up on the screen again, I look away.

  – Fifteen more new ones today, says John sighing and picking the mushroom out of his omelette. You can smell it on their clothes.

  He means prisoners, helicoptered in. Marginals. And it’s true, the smell of Atlantica clings to them like a vapour spray.

  – All insisting they’re innocent, like mugs, says John, reaching for the mayonnaise.

  He has complicated rituals regarding food. Expertly, he slices the omelette open and smears mayonnaise inside, then shakes the pepper-pot ten times over the whole thing. He never eats till it’s stone cold. For my own reasons, I’d rather not hear about the new Atlantican recruits.

  – Gotta go, I say.

  He grunts by way of reply. I’ll admit that I’m avoiding him. The doom hangs around him like an aura. Walking back along the red line to the cabin, I pick up the tension. It crackles around my head like electricity.

  Atlantica, Atlantica.

  When two people are thrown together, things develop, don’t they?

  After only a few days, it felt as though Hannah and I were in the same boat. Like kidnapper and hostage. With every session we spent together, there was an intimacy. We didn’t need to use as many words. There were short-cuts to things. Oh, I still hadn’t properly clocked that she’d got to me. It didn’t hit me that what I was feeling for her, things like admiration and pity and respect and distaste (no point lying about it) might be part of something bigger. Perhaps that’s how real families begin, with a stirring that’s like the pump of blood. Something you can’t do anything about, to stop.

  – Hannah, what’s going to happen to me, I asked her.

  I said it so low it came out as a whisper. We were standing close. So close we were almost touching, by the vending machine at the end of another God-awful session. Soon it would be time for the guard to come and fetch me. I hardly knew what I was feeling.

  – How’s it going to end?

  She reached out a small hand and laid it on my arm, then just as suddenly, pulled it back, as though burnt. It happened so quickly I could have imagined it.

  – It doesn’t look good for you, she said.

  But there was something in her voice that gave me hope.

  – Hannah, I went.

  – Yes?

  She was inspecting the vending machine. Then she began to press buttons on it.

  – How did you get to be here, in this place?

  – Munchhausen’s, she said. I’m an expert. My mother had it. Has it. Anyway, with my Crabbe’s Block – it’s a – an emotional blockage – it made sense to work here. I could stay in one place. My work meets my needs, she said.

  – We’re more alike than you think, I said, realising it suddenly.

  Her eyes seemed to water behind her lenses, then, and I began to realise I was getting to her just like she was getting to me. The air around us was full of attraction; you could almost see its little glittery particles, like a potent hair spray.

  – Don’t you want to live outside, ever? I asked her. I mean, this place, it’s a prison, Hannah.

  The idea didn’t seem to offend her.

  – I go to St Placid, to visit my mother sometimes. But I get – overloaded.

  – What, like stressed? You get stressed?

  – Sort of, she said, shivering in her cardigan. Agoraphobic too.

  There was another long silence.

  – I always liked staying indoors, I said. Just me and the family. But now –

  – Yes?

  – Well, they’re gone, aren’t they?

  – I suppose so, she said.

  – But they’re still my property, I said. My intellectual property.

  – Your emotional property.

  She sort of blurted it, and I looked up. Her eyes were watering.

  I wanted to take her in my arms. Carry her out of that place for ever. Yes: even then I did.

  – I have never had any of that, she said.

  She looked so small and so vulnerable there by the machine. She turned and began to feed it coins, one by one, slowly, then dropped her head and stared at the Libertycare logo on the carpet. Give and take, it said. Sometimes, it’s hard to remember a string of events and emotions, especially if they seem to happen all at once, so they’re not a string but a t
angle.

  The following things happened: the vending machine made a beep; a tear ran down Hannah’s cheek and plopped bang into the middle of one of the circles on the carpet; her Frooto suddenly arrived with a clatter and jingled out her change; my heart somersaulted. And I realised that I’d been feeling lonelier than I’d done in my whole life, now the Hoggs weren’t mine any more, lonelier than when I was at the Junior Welcome Centre, before I’d invented them, and that I was a lesser, diminished man, whose heart had shrivelled to a small and bitter little tuber, gone underground. It would never flower again, that I knew. Except that right at the moment when life seemed as bad as it could be, Hannah Park had changed something. Done something to me I couldn’t begin to explain. The feeling came that I had to reach out to her now or I never would, that the moment had come at last, and I must grab on to it and cling for dear life, because this thing – however vague and nameless it was, and however scared it made me – it was real. I stepped towards her. She swayed, like she was ready to fall.

  And that’s when I wrapped my arms around Hannah in her huge cardigan, and held her tight. I closed my eyes and breathed in the faint smell of peanut butter. Through the padding of the cardigan I could feel she was small, all bones, like a scraggy bird. She was shaking.

  Chew, chew, chew.

  The sea outside is flat as a pancake.

  Spit.

  And plop.

  – So it was a love story, goes John.

  – No. She didn’t do love, and nor did I.

  But I’m lying of course.

  The next morning I was back in my room, staring into space and thinking about Hannah, when the knock came and he stepped in.

  – Harvey!

  Wesley Pike.

  He actually came and sat on the bed. My breakfast lay in crumbs around the small desk. He stirred me up. It was unnerving. He shouldn’t have sat on the bed. It had aroused me. Christ, for a fleeting second I actually wondered if I might be gay.

  – Hannah Park has successfully completed her research, he said, shifting his weight. So we won’t be needing you any longer. Your co-operation with this project will be taken into account when you receive your Social Adjustment.

  He smiled. Tight and efficient. His handsome face.

  – When? My groin really was in turmoil. Down boy, I thought. Talk about inappropriate.

  – Tomorrow, he said. After your de-briefing with Hannah Park.

  I curled up my toes inside my shoes.

  – But that’s …

  – In twenty-four hours’ time. It all happens in the building, he said breezily. All the data about your crimes will be fed in to the Liberty Machine, as per standard procedure. Your co-operation and its value will also be vectored and factored. Your Adjustment will appear on screen at twelve tomorrow, in the Social Adjustment Office. The guard will take you. Bye then, Harvey. It’s been a pleasure knowing you. You’ve been of more use to Liberty than you know.

  What the fuck did that mean? He grinned and left me standing there, staring in the mirror.

  My face looked terrible, like I had died.

  Well, if I am going to turn gay, I thought, then prison’s the place for it.

  THE HOGG FAMILY DYNAMIC

  In the Hogg family dynamic, Harvey Kidd is both ‘father’ and ‘son’ to the group, Hannah wrote. Her hands flew over the keyboard, stabbing sharply as she laid bare the personalities of the people Harvey called his nearest and dearest. It was easy enough to write. She had a lifetime’s experience of keeping a distance. She couched the ten pages in the factual, metaphor-free language the Boss digested quickest:

  The mother-figure is the most potent emotional symbol in the portfolio. She is the most sharply defined, as well as being the member Kidd invokes most frequently. The father-figure and the uncle are classic ‘male power-sharers’. Kidd himself confesses to feeling ambivalence about the idea of having a father. This is clearly Oedipal. His solution is to dilute Rick Hogg’s authority by setting him next to an older brother, Uncle Sid – whom Kidd pictures as more of a friend, or ‘alternative’ father. Lola is a straightforward sexual fantasy. However, because she also plays the role of a sister, Kidd feels the discomfort and guilt associated with theoretical incest. The same applies to Gloria, the ‘mother’. Meanwhile Cameron, the ‘brother’, is a source of deep resentment. He provides a constant reminder of the ‘incest factor’ with Lola and Gloria, as well as being a rival for parental affection …

  And so on.

  When she e-mailed it to Pike, it was a relief to have it behind her. She was confused, exhausted, scared. Nothing felt right. She had never had these feelings before. They tore at her, they hurt. That was it. What was happening felt dangerous, unmanageable. Unplug a blockage, and anything can happen, can’t it.

  NOT LOVE

  We were sitting on chairs, facing each other across the table. On the walls around us, the portraits of Mum, Dad, Uncle Sid, Lola and Cameron looked down on us. Hannah’s face was pale and her eyes were red, as though she’d been crying. Ever since I’d walked in, it had been strained and horrible, both of us aware that what had happened last time had shifted things into a new gear. But that the timing was all to cock, because it was the end of the road.

  – Will you miss me? I asked her.

  She looked blank.

  – I haven’t thought about it.

  With any other woman that might have thrown me, but I knew her better now.

  – Think about it, I said, and I waited a moment, while she did.

  But the silence went on too long; I was impatient.

  – Look, Hannah. This matters to me. Do you – feel anything for me?’

  – Like what?

  – Like, like. Do you like me?

  She looked puzzled. Alarmed, even.

  – Yes. I think I like you. I don’t know. I don’t have – emotional feelings – I don’t make the same connections –

  I interrupted. – When I held you –

  But she was shaking her head. From the stiff way she held her little body – it seemed all disjointed and alien, like she wasn’t at home in it – I guessed all sorts of stuff was bubbling away and she was struggling to keep a lid on it.

  – I’m different, she said. I always have been. My psychological make-up – you’ll just have to believe me. There are advantages and disadvantages. Mostly, disadvantages. It means I don’t – I can’t –

  – Yes you can, I said. I suddenly felt powerful, sort of evangelical about it. – I can make you feel. I whispered it hoarsely, gazing into her face to try to reach something, willing it to smile. – Can’t I?

  It must’ve been a moment of madness because I reached out and took her hand, then squeezed it gently, reinforcing the question. She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t squeeze back either, although I longed for it. I hardly dared look at her face. Why was I doing this? I must be mad. Too much time spent on my own in silent rooms. Too much time confusing real people with substitutes. Yes you can, I thought. I can make you.

  – Well, I just wanted to say I’m going to miss you.

  I stopped. Still didn’t look at her face. I’d suddenly made myself vulnerable. The silence that followed was broken by a strange muffled popping noise. Hannah had her hand deep in her cardigan pocket.

  – It’s bubble-wrap, she said flatly. I use it.

  More popping.

  – Hannah, I feel very strongly about you.

  I said it quite formally, because it was important. I was glad, then, to have the pictures of my family around me. I wanted them to be part of this. Witnesses. We’d never kept anything from one another before; there was no need to start now. Hannah’s face had gone back to being blank, and she was still popping the bubble-wrap in her pocket.

  – Even more strongly (this was a revelation to me as I said it) – even more strongly than I feel about the Hoggs. Including Lola.

  The Hoggs’ expression didn’t alter. They just kept staring down at me. I expected Hannah’s face to re
gister something, though; my own felt all distorted and distended with feeling, like a dried fruit in water – but she just nodded blankly, and the popping carried on.

  Maybe it was the impossibility of the whole thing – her, an emotional cripple, me due to leave for ever in ten minutes – the absurdity of the situation. But something had suddenly made me even more determined to have a crack at this. I owed it to myself, was the feeling.

  – Come here, Hannah, I said. She stopped popping and stood. Then stepped forward. I was still sitting in my chair.

  – Come closer, I said.

  Still sitting, I put my arms around her. She stood there rigid as a puppet. I pulled her down towards me then. Gentle, but clumsy. Flesh and blood. The feel of her sparrow body crushed against mine, the table-edge in our way. Another awkward embrace.

  Then I blurted – I –

  There was a long silence, because I couldn’t do the rest, but she must’ve got my drift.

  –I–

  It was all too much, too hopeless, too miserable, I thought suddenly. Stupid. I didn’t even know if what I’d nearly said was true, about loving her. Not then.

  – Never mind, I said, into the folds of her cardigan.

  To be holding someone, and to feel so lonely – it was killing me, frankly. I couldn’t do this after all. I was bottling out.

  We stayed there like that for a while, and then something both small and enormous happened. She let out a little raucous noise. An animal noise, almost. I don’t think she even registered that it had come from her, but it jolted something to life inside me, and a thought broke into words.

  – There’s nothing wrong with you, Hannah, I said slowly. I think you believed what your mother told you, because it suited you. Because you wanted to believe it. And now –

  I stopped. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. She’d gone very pale, like cheese.

  – Whatever it is, I said, I think you’re hanging on to it, this – thing you’ve got.

  – It’s called Crabbe’s Block.